APOCALYPSE

The term  “apocalypse” has its roots in a Greek term that literally means “lifting of the veil” (ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis), a kind of “revelation”.  In the Christian West it generally refers to the Last Gospel of John, the “Apocalypse” foretelling  the coming of “the end of time”. More broadly an “apocalypse” may be viewed essentially as a revelation of the future.

How did these drawings come to be an “apocalypse” for me?   When my pen plotter first successfully executed one of my generative drawings I experienced exhilarating wonderment. It was like a revelation or “lifting of the veil”.  Clearly “form-generating” procedures could not only generate form ideas on a computer monitor; they could also drive a drawing machine and do so with tireless precision.  Following years working on my “Magic Hand of Chance”, these drawings were hardly a blip on the tip of an immense wave bringing vast cultural change.  Almost any problem or task whatsoever could be coded and executed with specialized machines. With this “revelation” I knew we were on the threshold of a new age.  This wave would take us far beyond accounting and word processing. This was a revolution that Peter Weibel named in retrospect as the “Algorithmic Revolution” (Note 1).  For me, these works, drawn in my electronic scriptorium a few years later, stood for this “apocalypse”, a “lifting of the veil” in my studio overlooking “Diamond Lake”.